Chocolate is throughout the world regarded as being one of the finest types of confectionary and various types and shapes of chocolate confectionary have been developed over the years. The innovation within the field of chocolate has been much focused on sensory aspects, such as taste, and mouth feel. However, also the visual appearance is an important aspect in the consumer's overall perception of the quality of a chocolate confectionary. Accordingly, the visual appearance of a chocolate confectionary plays a key role for the chocolate manufacturer because a less attractive appearance of the confectionary will easily be judged by the consumer to relate to a confectionary of inferior quality.
An important problem relating to the visual appearance of a chocolate confectionary is the bloom effect which may be easily recognisable on the surface of the chocolate. In case blooming has occurred, the surface of the chocolate confectionary will have a rather dull appearance having less gloss and often having clearly visible bloom crystals on the surface. The appearance of bloom, if any, typically takes place after weeks or months of storage.
Especially storage at high temperatures in warmer regions may be problematic with respect to the stability of the chocolate product.
Chocolate generally comprises cocoa butter, cocoa solids and sugar. Milk fat and other ingredients may be present in chocolate compositions as well.
In the manufacturing process of chocolate, the ingredients are mixed. The mixture is subjected to a tempering process in a tempering apparatus in which the chocolate is subjected to a carefully pre-programmed temperature profile. Subsequently, the chocolate is used for making the chocolate confectionary and the resulting confectionary is cooled following a predetermined cooling program. The tempering process serves the purpose of making a sufficient amount of a desired type of seed crystals, which in turn is responsible for obtaining a rather stable chocolate product less prone to changes in the crystal composition of the solid fats.
Bloom in chocolate is a well-studied phenomenon and among chocolate manufactures it is agreed that the bloom effect somehow is related to solid fat crystal transformations that may take place in the chocolate.
In the prior art various ways of diminishing the bloom effect in chocolates have been suggested.
Sato et al., JAOCS, Vol. 66, no. 12, 1989, describe the use of crystalline seed to accelerate the crystallization going on in cocoa butter and dark chocolate upon solidification.
JP 2008206490 discloses a tempering promoter in the form of SUS-type triglycerides, where S is a saturated fatty acid having 20 or more carbon atoms and U is an unsaturated fatty acid such as oleic acid.
EP 0 294 974 A2 describes a powdery tempering accelerator also based on SUS-type triglycerides having a total number of carbon atoms of the constituent fatty acid residues of between 50 and 56. The tempering accelerator is added, for example, as dispersion in a dispersion medium, as a seed for desired crystal formation to the chocolate during the production.
Also the addition of anti-blooming agents having specific tri-glyceride compositions is known. These anti-blooming agents may typically be based on vegetable fats obtained by chemical interesterification of triglyceride oils using certain catalysts.
Accordingly, in the art of manufacturing chocolate or chocolate-like products, there still exists a need for improving the heat stability of such products.